Friday, July 31, 2009

So, here he goes....! Mike jumps into the water off of the Dover shore & heads for France at 10:00 p.m. PST (6 a.m. his time). If you're interested in seeing his progress, there's a way of tracking him.

Otherwise, I'll write again tomorrow with the news & as much information as I may have.

My best information on tracking him ---Tracker 1 is on Gallivant -- orange

> If you go to www.ais-doverstraits.co.uk and click on the link satellite> tracker link to map page> you get a goggle map page with the real time trackingOR JUST CLICK ON THE HEADLINE OF THIS POST TO TAKE YOU THERE DIRECTLY

> The positions are sent from the boats to the tracking page as they happen at> 10 minute intervals through out the swim.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Well, it's that time of year when friends, loved ones, and extended swim family begin the annual migration to Dover for their Channel attempts. I want to wish everyone good weather, good stomachs, good shoulders, and good luck! There are so many of my swim family going this year, it's like the Brighton invasion! Anyway, best of luck to you all. I'll put up Abe's posts here, and here's a link to Marcy's great blog:www.cuttingwater.blogspot.comKeep you posted!

Monday, July 13, 2009

First, residents were jostled out of bed at 7.34 a.m. by a 4.0 magnitude earthquake that was centered 19 miles out in the ocean.“I was having coffee up on the balcony and I felt it shaking,” Kate Lutkemeier said.She wasn’t the only one.“I heard my doors and windows rattling, thinking that somebody was trying to get in my front door actually,” La Jolla resident Mary Skeen said.The quake was felt all over the county, which isn’t uncommon in San Diego -- but what happened just minutes later was a little fishy.

“We just got here about 15 minutes ago and Lilly, what did you see on the beach?” John Feher asked his little daughter.“Squid, squid, squid, squid, squid.” she replied.Dozens of dazed Humboldt squid, which were roughly three- to four-feet long and weighed close to 40 pounds, were found flapping around on La Jolla Shores beach.“It’s like their equilibrium is all messed up and they don’t know what they’re doing and they can’t back out there,” said beachgoer Bill Baumann. “It was like they got -- I don’t know -- all shook up.”It didn’t take long for the seagulls to swoop in and start feeding on the squid, so beachgoers ran to the rescue and tried frantically to save them by throwing them back in the water. That proved to be a difficult task for several reasons: they were extremely heavy, very slippery, and when the good Samaritans did manage to get them back them in water, the squid didn’t know which way to go and kept washing back up on shore.“Some people were saying it was the earthquake this morning that caused them to get disoriented, but who knows? Feher said.